The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (58 page)

Mrs. D receives a letter from the field worker, Miss Anderson:

There are many matters to be considered before we could place a girl permanently in your home, and at the present time I do not have a suitable girl available.

Anna would be glad to stay with you permanently. But I am afraid you would find that adequate supervision would be a bigger problem than you realize. I could tell you more about Anna’s very poor background, and her mentality, which we have studied over a period of years, and you would then realize why our rules have to be rather severe.

For instance, there is the question of the hour she is to get in when she goes to the movies one night a week. I set this at 10:30 rather than 11:30, thinking that she should be able to go to the first show, in which case 10:30 seems late enough. She has also asked if she may attend the New Year’s Dance at the White Eagle Dance Hall with her girl friend and their escorts. Knowing nothing of the type of dance this will be, I hesitate to grant this privilege. These requests are just a sample of the problems which would increase as time went on. We want our girls to be contented and lead as normal a life as possible, but they must be protected.

As soon as I hear that a definite transfer has been accomplished I will send you a contract, and will contact the Welfare Department.

After discussing matters in detail we can probably be a bit more lenient, but success depends a great deal on her outside contacts, and she will need a great deal of guidance, as is the case with many of our state’s unfortunate girls.

Mrs. D writes:

It is so hard to keep Anna in bounds, for even under this watching she managed to connive with a taxi driver and take our youngest out to visit friends of hers at a long distance and feed him Lord knows what.

She may also have been making indiscreet gestures downtown.

Anna writes:

Sorry not to have answered long before now, but we can write only one letter a week which is on Sundays.

How is everyone down that way. It sure is quite a lost to me.

The snow storm we had a week ago, didn’t have too much effect on our trip here. There was 2–4 inches of snow in Some places. Miss Anderson wished she had some chains that day. Cars slid from one side of the road to the other, and one car went off on the wrong side of the road into a ditch. Several had to get out of the car to clean off windshiels and I don’t know what. We stopped at the Rutland Dairy Bar for lunch, and then from there we had good weather.

Hope your trip was as successful as that of ours.

The points of view which you had mentioned in your letter are all very true and I only wished it had been a bad dream myself.

Glad to know you called Evelyn and Mrs. Warner. I can imagine how they felt and by all means Evelyn. She and I thought quite a lot of each other and I sure miss her. I miss church chior and M. Y. F. very much.

Close now with best wishes.

Unless wages for your present girl are paid in full to date of return or transfer no other girl will be placed with you until full settlement of all accounts is made.

You will not hire this girl out to any other party.

You are to exercise parental supervision with due consideration for physical health and cleanliness, moral training, improvement of mind, and wise use of leisure time.

If girl does not prove satisfactory you will notify the school at once and she will be returned. The school also reserves the right to return the she any time the school sees fit.

You will promptly advise the Priest or Minister of the Church with which she is affiliated, as to her arrival in your community.

You will supervise the buying of her clothing and all other necessary articles and you will allow her a small amount of spending money, not more than $1.00 cents per week. Her wages will be $15 per week.

Shirley has been wonderful all through my hospitalization and since my return home. Thanks to her I have had a good rest and shall be able to pick up my various responsibilities eagerly as soon as we get a little cool weather.

We have managed to get Shirley into a swimming hole for most of the hot afternoons.

On the July 31 bill: raincoat, hairbrush, suit, skirt, jacket, underpants, gym suit.

On the August 31 bill: sweater, dickey, wool skirt, blouses, sneakers, blue jeans.

I said I would write and let you know where I went, when I got a new job, so here I am. I am working in Conn. They are lovely people and they take me with them most every place they go. I have a very nice room with a little radio, electric fan, private bath room with hot and cold water, and etc.

We are near the salt water beach, and go swimming 2 or 3 times a week, and we sure injoy it, as it’s so hot every day here, that we can hardly breath, and the humidity very heavy with out any stirring in the air that we all lie around like sticks.

Last Sunday, there was 8,500 people and children at the beach. What do you think of that.

I walk nearly 4 to 6 miles when I go shopping or movies, etc., both ways altogether. Except when they go in by the car.

I am partly on my own here, and next month I will be having all my own money. I don’t have to send any of my mail back to the school. The last letter I got from home was about a month ago saying that they were having nothing more to do with me because I wouldn’t stop writting letters to my brother in the service. I just couldn’t stop that for anyone as I think too much of that brother. I have written home to them twice with in the last 3 weeks and no answer. They won’t even let my sisters write to me any more.

Well I am so glad to think that I am out again and hope to hold it out.

I am so glad to know that you are adoring your little baby girl. I can see your reason if you take to them the way I do.

Write soon.

It is an entirely satisfactory situation.

Life isn’t easy for a girl like Shirley, sensitive and loving and having to give up a family whom it is natural for her to care about.

Shirley requests permission to work Sunday afternoons in a luncheonette as waitress. Without knowing more particulars concerning the reputation of the luncheonette, the clientele, etc., I hesitate to give her permission. However if all is in order in that respect, and if such work would not interfere with her duties in your home and with her school work, I have no objection to her earning a little extra money in this way. However she must remember that her first obligation is to you.

Mrs. D; I lied to you about the Sunday night altogether. I was with Dixie, Dolores, & a soldier named Jimmie who I met before we left for the Cape. I didn’t think it would sound so suspicious to be out to dinner with Dixie, but I guess it sounded worse. You would probably think it was a pick-up, so I’m not going to try to argue out of it. As far as doing anything else underhanded, I’ve only been out once a week, so I don’t see how I could possibly do anything so terrible. I have missed Church about 3 times, maybe 4. Only two of the times I have helped out at the Maples. The other times I have waited for Tootsie & Ralph to come after me when they got out of Church. One of the days that I said I had to stay after school I didn’t. I went riding with Judy.

Mr. Russell talked to me about it. He said to be “above board” with you, so I’m telling you everything. I can’t think of anything else I have done underhanded. Since last Thurs. I’ve tried to be very nice & happy with everyone but I’m not at all. If I can’t even go home to see my mother & family things must be in pretty bad shape. I haven’t been home since the last of Dec. I would like to see everybody.

I have learned a lesson Mrs. D and I’ll never lie to you again. I would be the happiest person, if you would give me another chance to work at the Maples. I want to very much because you wouldn’t have to give me any money then. I hate to ask you for it, and I do need it. I don’t like you to have to pay my cleaning bills, & money for the bus & things like that, that I have to ask you for all the time. You wouldn’t even have to give me an allowance. I promise you with my whole heart that you wouldn’t regret it. If you say be home at six thirty I’d be home if I had to leave everything in a mess. Ray told me when he called today that the girls who work there said they never missed anyone as they missed me sunday. I couldn’t get a job anywhere and make as good money as I do there, one day a week. I only want to work on Sundays, & no other place would want a person who could work just that time. Beckmann’s only pay 45 ¢ an hr. & the Walkers pay 60 ¢ besides the tips. Lots of the kids from high school came down that sunday, because I was working & it certainly helps the business. It is hard work but I love it, and would never complain about being tired. Ray also told me that Dixie wasn’t putting anyone on steady for Sundays, because he was waiting to see if I could come back. Dixie knows why I can’t do it anyway, because I told him why I’m here. He would be willing to help me, I know. I’m begging you for this one chance, and if it doesn’t work, I’ll go back to the school. I’d hate to but I would be willing to go if I knew I did something wrong.

Shirley

From her new job, Joan sends a note to Mrs. D’s little boy:

Everyone has their ups and downs. At our house, they are nearly all downs. I guess its the same at yours.

I really enjoyed working at your house, and I didn’t really understand myself, for more or less wanting to leave. But it is much more pleasant working at a store.

You shall never know how I feel about doing housework all the time, as you shall probably never experience it.

Mrs. D will have at least one hundred maids in her lifetime. At a certain point she stops calling them maids and begins to call them cleaning women. They don’t live in her house, but come in from outside.

What I am doing is trying to start a new cleaning woman digging out some of the accumulations of this and that.

Ingrid from Austria, with them for a year: moved to Switzerland

Doris: came to clean twice a week

Mrs. Tuit, pronounced “Toot”: was hit on the head by a music stand

Anne Foster: lost a ring at the beach

Mrs. Bushey: deaf as a doorpost

The problem is to see 20 sculptures in one hour. An hour seems like a long time. But 20 sculptures are a lot of sculptures. Yet an hour still seems like a long time. When we calculate, we discover that one hour divided by 20 sculptures gives us three minutes a sculpture. But though the calculation is correct, this seems wrong to us: three minutes is far too little time in which to see a sculpture, and it is also far too little to be left with, after starting with a whole hour. The trouble, we suppose, is that there are so many sculptures. Yet however many sculptures there are, we still feel we ought to have enough time if we have an hour. It must be that although the calculation is correct, it does not represent the situation correctly, though how to represent the situation correctly in terms of a calculation, and why this calculation does not really represent it, we can’t yet discover.

The answer may be this: one hour is really much shorter than we have become accustomed to believe, and three minutes much longer, so that we may eventually reverse our problem and say that we start with a fairly short period of time, one hour, in which to see 20 sculptures, and find after calculation that we will have a surprisingly long period of time, three minutes, in which to look at each sculpture, although at this point it may begin to seem wrong that so many periods lasting so long, three minutes each, can all be contained in so short a period, one hour.

You learn how to be idle, how to do nothing. That is the new thing in your life—to do nothing. To do nothing and not be impatient about doing nothing. It is easy to do nothing and become impatient. It is not easy to do nothing and not mind it, not mind the hours passing, the hours of the morning passing and then the hours of the afternoon, and one day passing and the next passing, while you do nothing.